Thank you!

Thanks to your advocacy efforts on our behalf, we're happy to report that the recently passed Omnibus Spending Bill includes a very small increase in funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities! While our work is not over with regards to the upcoming 2018 budget to be passed in the fall, the Omnibus Spending Bill represents an endorsement of the important work that the humanities do for our communities. These funds will continue to support our work of providing free access to authoritative content about Virginia's history and culture.

Wyatt Tee Walker (1929–2018)

Wyatt Tee Walker was a civil rights
activist, author, and religious leader. After earning his master of divinity degree
from Virginia Union
University in 1953, Walker became the pastor of Gillfield Baptist Church in Petersburg. During the 1950s, he
served as the president of the Petersburg branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP), was the state director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in
Virginia, and founded the Petersburg Improvement Association. In 1960 he was
appointed chief of staff to Martin Luther King Jr. and served as the first full-time
executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Walker was
instrumental in the fund-raising campaigns of the SCLC early in the 1960s and he
helped formulate and analyze various protest strategies. He left the SCLC in 1964 and
went on to serve as the pastor of Canaan Baptist Church of Christ in Harlem, New
York, for thirty-seven years. Following his retirement in 2004, he returned to
Virginia, where he died in 2018. MORE...

Map This Entry

Share It

Early Years

Walker was born on August 16, 1929, in
Brockton, Massachusetts, the tenth of eleven children, to Pastor John Wise Walker
and Maude Pinn Walker. When he was still a baby, his family moved to
Merchantville, New Jersey, where he received his primary and secondary education,
and where, at nine years old, he and his siblings refused to be turned away from a
segregated movie theater. After graduating with a bachelor of science degree in
chemistry and physics from Virginia Union University in Richmond in 1950, he earned his master of divinity
degree in 1953 from Virginia Union University. While in the seminary, Walker met
Martin Luther King Jr. at an interseminary meeting while King was a student at
Crozer Theological Seminary in Upland, Pennsylvania.

Petersburg, SCLC, and the Civil Rights Movement

Walker served as the pastor of Gillfield
Baptist Church in Petersburg from 1953 until 1959. As such, he stood alongside
King as one of a group of younger, more liberal, more activist ministers who
became important leaders of the civil rights movement. Walker became the leader of
several civil rights organizations: he was president of the local chapter of the
NAACP and state director of CORE, and he founded the Petersburg Improvement
Association, a group that was modeled after King's Montgomery Improvement
Association. The Petersburg Improvement Association organized protests against
several of the city's segregated facilities. In fact, Walker was arrested the
first of his seventeen times in 1958 when he led his wife, children, and a few
other preachers and students to the all-white Petersburg Public Library. According
to the historian Taylor Branch, "Walker asked the librarian to give him the first
volume of Douglas
Southall Freeman's biography of Robert E. Lee" because it amused Walker "to think
that white southerners would arrest him for trying to read about their most
cherished hero." He led the Petersburg Improvement Association in marches in
Richmond protesting the closing of the schools in 1958, and he organized workshops
in Norfolk to teach nonviolent
strategies.

As a result of the success of the Petersburg
Improvement Association, King appointed Walker in 1958 to the board of the newly
founded SCLC, where Walker's work led to the establishment of the state chapter in
Virginia. In 1960, Walker became the first full-time executive director of SCLC.
He brought financial stability and organizational structure to the group. He also
was the architect of that organization's "Project C" protest strategy in
Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963—a movement of marches, sit-ins, and boycotts of
downtown merchants—which drew national and federal attention, and whose results
led to King's famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In 1964 Walker left his post at the SCLC and started work as a marketing
specialist for the Negro Heritage Library, of which he became president in 1966.
Part of the library's mission was to persuade schools to include the perspectives
and experiences of African Americans in their curricula. In 1967, at King's
behest, Walker became the interim pastor of Canaan Baptist Church in Harlem, New
York. There, on March 24, 1968, King served as the guest preacher at Walker's
installation service. Eleven days later, King was assassinated in Memphis,
Tennessee.

Later Years

In 1975 Walker earned his doctorate in African
American studies with a specialization in music from Colgate Rochester Divinity
School in Rochester, New York, and throughout the 1970s he served as New York
governor Nelson Rockefeller's urban affairs specialist. In 1978 Walker organized
the International Freedom Mobilization to protest apartheid in South Africa. In
1979, Walker published the first of his many books, "Somebody's
Calling My Name": Black Sacred Music and Social Change, in which he argued
that "what Black people are singing religiously will provide a clue as to what is
happening to them sociologically."

After a period of illness that resulted in a major stroke in January 2003, Walker
resigned as senior pastor of Canaan Baptist Church of Christ after thirty-seven
years. In 2004 he was officially installed as Pastor Emeritus. On January 18,
2009, he was one of twenty-five honorees who received the "Keepers of the Flame"
award at the African American Church Inaugural Ball, celebrating the inauguration
of United States president Barack Obama. Walker died at an assisted-living facility in Chester on January 23, 2018.

1960
- Wyatt Tee Walker is appointed chief of staff to Martin Luther King Jr. and serves as the first full-time executive director of Atlanta's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He moves from Petersburg to Atlanta, Georgia.

1964
- Wyatt Tee Walker leaves his post at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and starts work as a marketing specialist for the Negro Heritage Library. He becomes president in 1966.

September 1, 1967
- Wyatt Tee Walker becomes the interim pastor of Canaan Baptist Church in Harlem, New York.

March 24, 1968
- Martin Luther King Jr. is the guest preacher at Canaan Baptist Church in Harlem, New York, at Wyatt Tee Walker's official installation as pastor. Eleven days later, King is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

1975
- Wyatt Tee Walker earns his doctorate in African American studies with a specialization in music from Colgate Rochester Divinity School in Rochester, New York.

1978
- Wyatt Tee Walker organizes the International Freedom Mobilization to protest apartheid in South Africa.

1979
- Wyatt Tee Walker publishes his first of many books, "Somebody's Calling My Name": Black Sacred Music and Social Change.

January 18, 2009
- Wyatt Tee Walker is one of twenty-five honorees who receive the "Keepers of the Flame" award at the African American Church Inaugural Ball, celebrating the inauguration of President Barack Obama.